Our house with the new workshop
“Why do you want to come with us to squash?” asked my sister curiously. “Do you want to learn to play?”
“No, I’ll just wait for you outside.”
“Wouldn’t you rather stay at home?” asked my father. “There’s nothing to do there.”
“That’s okay, I’ll play outside.”
My father shook his head, baffled. I felt in my pocket. I had the salt cellar that I’d borrowed from the dining-room table, and a piece of string to use as a collar and leash. Now, which rabbit hole should I wait at?
The squash courts at Bovington Army Camp were surrounded by trees growing on banks. Dug into the banks and between the tree roots were numerous rabbit holes. I chose one and settled down to wait, the salt cellar poised ready to sprinkle on an unsuspecting bunny’s tail.
I waited.
And waited.
Birds forgot I was there and settled quite close to me, scratching among the autumn leaves in search of something juicy for dinner. There were plenty of birds, but rabbits? I didn’t see one.
In the distance I could hear the balls slamming against the squash court walls.
Thwack, thwack.
I still had time. I moved my cold, cramped legs and tried another rabbit hole.
Eventually the thwacks stopped and my father and sister emerged, hot and red-faced with exertion, to find me miserable and rabbitless.
“What on earth are you doing?” asked my father. “And why have you got your mother’s best silver salt cellar?”
“I was trying to catch a rabbit to take home.”
My sister rolled her eyes, but my father said nothing more as we drove home.
I imagine he felt sorry for me, because somehow he managed to persuade my mother that I could have a rabbit in the new year. It was decided that the space next to the proposed new workshop would be set aside for my rabbit.
Unfortunately, nothing happened until late the following spring. Although the old workshop was falling down, it couldn’t be dismantled because a pair of robins were busily building their nest on a shelf.
I climbed on a stool and sneaked a peek at the nest. It looked very cosy, made from grass, leaves and lined with animal hair and moss.
I loved watching the mother sit on her little blue eggs. I watched her, and she watched me with her black beady eye.
“I’m pleased you are going to have a family,” I told her, “but I wish you’d hurry up. I can’t have my rabbit until your family is grown up.”
One day, I visited the nest and there were four little orange gaping mouths in there. Mum and Dad were kept busy, arriving at regular intervals with beaks stuffed with caterpillars and other delicacies. My mother’s passion for gardening meant they reaped the benefits of her vegetable garden and she frequently unearthed juicy worms for them.
“You are very cute,” I told the baby birds, “but I wish you’d hurry up and grow and leave home.”
At last the babies fledged, and the old workshop fell silent again. Now I had to wait for it to be pulled down and a new workshop to be erected. Adults were so slowwww.
While I waited, I had an idea. I would make myself a woodlouse sanctuary! I’d played with woodlice a lot, but I’d never tried keeping them as pets in my bedroom. I’d always liked woodlice and admired their ability to roll into shiny balls when alarmed. I had a nice shoebox with a tight-fitting lid; that would do perfectly! I decided not to tell the rest of the family about my plan as I was pretty sure they didn’t share my fondness for woodlice. So I secretly went hunting in the garden and found plenty of the little creatures. I popped them into my box with old leaves, soil and included rotten wood for them to eat.
I’m not sure what I did wrong, but within a few days, every single woodlouse was dead. I still feel rather guilty about it.
“Why do you have a shoebox with earth and wood in it in your bedroom?” my mother asked.
“Oh, just something for art,” I replied, relieved she hadn’t noticed the corpses of my little pets.
The old workshop was pulled down, and a new one was built on the same site. My father constructed a hutch with compartments for both day and night, and the whole area was enclosed to make a run for the rabbit. My mother planted honeysuckle to make the area look more attractive.
I had saved my pocket money and visited the pet shop.
“Can I help you, love?” asked the lady behind the counter.
“I’d like a collar and lead, please,” I said.
“What size would you like? What breed of dog?”
“Um, it’s not exactly a dog.”
“Oh, you’d like a ferret harness?”
“No, a collar and lead, please. For a rabbit.”
“Sorry, speak up, love, did you say a rabbit?”
“Yes, please.”
“Well, if you’re sure… What colour would you like?”
“Red, please.”
I ended up with a cat collar, complete with a bell, and a lead attached. I can’t tell you how many times I drew that collar and lead out of the paper bag and admired them.
Everything was ready and I thought I might burst with excitement.
Our house
with the new workshop
At last came the day when my father arrived home with a cardboard box. Something was scrabbling around in it, something with claws.
“Ach, open it,” said my mother.
I lifted the flaps, and there, pressed into a corner was a white ball of fluff, a baby rabbit.
“Ohhhh…” I exhaled, already in love with the little thing.
I reached into the box and lifted her out, admiring her pink floppy ears and deep red eyes.
“What are you going to call her?”
“Twinkletoes.”
“Not Snowy, like you said?”
“Well, her long name is Princess Snowy Twinkletoes the First.”
“Well, take Princess Snowy Twinkletoes to her new enclosure, see if she likes it.”
Princess Snowy did like it. She particularly liked the honeysuckle plants my mother had painstakingly planted. She didn’t eat them, she just hopped along the row snipping them off at ground level with her razor teeth, ensuring they would never grow again. My mother was furious.
“I wouldn’t mind so much if she ate them!” she fumed.
“She’s just a baby,” I said protectively. “She’s probably teething.”
But my mother never succeeded in growing honeysuckle around Princess Snowy’s enclosure, and Snowy thrived. She grew bigger, and bigger.
Soon she was big enough to wear the collar and lead, and she came everywhere with me. It took a long time to go anywhere because she would hop this way and that, nibbling grass. People would stare at us, but I didn’t care.
My rabbit was constantly hungry and soon grew to be a very large rabbit. And she developed a kick like a kangaroo. If she didn’t want to be cuddled, which was all the time, a well-aimed kick in my stomach took all my breath away.
“I don’t know why she’s so unfriendly,” I complained.
“Ach, perhaps she needs rabbit company,” said my mother. “We’ll take her over to the Hale’s house today. I know the girls have a nice girl rabbit. Perhaps they’ll be friends and it’ll be nice for them both.”
The Hale family lived on the opposite side of Wareham. To reach their huge, beautiful Tudor house, Ivy had to buck and fart her way through woods for quite some distance. Sometimes we glimpsed red squirrels as these woods were one of their last habitats before their bullying cousins, the grey squirrels, chased them off.
The house had been in the family for generations, and was breathtaking, with long oak-panelled corridors decorated with ancestral paintings. I wasn’t much interested in the interior so I don’t remember much about it, but I do remember being shown an ordinary-looking wardrobe in one of the bedrooms.
“Well, open it,” Heather Hale said.
I did. It seemed normal enough to me. She leaned in and touched something, and the back wall slid sideways. I gaped at her.
“What is it?”
“A secret passage, of course,” she said airily.
“Where does it go?”
“Not sure really.”
“Have you ever been down it?”
“Nope. My brother and his friends did once, but it’s all spidery and some of it’s fallen in. Mummy says it’s dangerous.”
A secret passage! I was just discovering Enid Blyton and her Famous Five books, and The Mystery of series. I’d also read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardobe. I was in raptures.
Being Tudor, the house must have been built between 1485 and 1603, but I confess my knowledge of history is too poor to explain the purpose of the secret passage. If I was to hazard a guess, I’d say it was built for smugglers to hide their contraband, or escape from the law, as Dorset has a rich history of smuggling. Even more likely, it might have been a ‘priest hole’, a hiding place for priests, built into many English Catholic houses when Catholics were persecuted by law in England, from the beginning of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I in 1558.
But pirates, priest holes and secret passages were the last things on my mind that day. Princess Snowy Twinkletoes the First was on her leash and I led the way to the rabbit run where Heather’s Miss Bunny sat on her hind legs daintily washing her face.
Princess Snowy suddenly saw Miss Bunny and stood stock still, staring, her nose twitching. She tensed, and made a beeline for Miss Bunny, bounding so fast that I had to run to keep up. The signs were good; it looked as though Princess Snowy was keen to play. Miss Bunny hopped to the front of her run and stood on her back legs, nose whiffling, front paws on the wire. Miss Bunny was much smaller than Snowy, but definitely interested in her new playmate. Princess Snowy was almost rigid with excitement as they touched noses through the wire mesh.
“Look!” I said, clasping my hands under my chin in delight. “Look how excited Snowy is, she can’t wait to go in and play with Miss Bunny.”
“I think they are going to be best friends,” said Mrs Hale, smiling.
“Ach, put Snowy into the run and we can watch them play,” said my mother.
Did we say play? Wrong word, wrong description. The instant that Princess Snowy’s fluffy feet hit the ground, she was galloping after Miss Bunny. Miss Bunny, a rather alarmed expression on her face, lolloped away from her pursuer. But Princess Snowy was on a mission and soon caught up. Miss Bunny froze as Snowy gripped her round the midriff, and pumped. My mouth dropped open.
“Oh!” said Mrs Hale.
“Golly!” said Heather.
“Ach,” said my mother.
“Oh look,” I said, “Princess Snowy Twinkletoes and Miss Bunny are playing a lovely game together!”
“Hmm…” said my mother.
“Oh, look, they’re playing that game again!” I said, as Miss Bunny broke free, chased by Snowy Twinkletoes.
“I think we may have misunderstood Princess Snowy Twinkletoes,” said Mrs Hale grimly.
“Ach, I’m terribly sorry...” said my mother as Snowy climbed aboard Miss Bunny again. And again. And again.
Now there was no denying the fact that Snowy was a lusty buck rabbit, and not a female at all. And if we weren’t willing to accept that, proof came 31 days later when Miss Bunny (now Mrs Bunny) gave birth to eleven kits. Snowy was confined to barracks, apart from walks on his leash, and allowed no more play dates.
The following winter took everybody by surprise. Many claim that Dorset is the warmest county in England as it is situated so far south and has more than its fair share of sunshine hours. However, even Dorset didn’t escape the winter of 1962 -1963, soon to be called the Big Freeze.
Temperatures plummeted and were recorded as being the lowest since 1739. Astonishingly, lakes and rivers began to freeze over. Then on 26th December, Boxing Day, the snow arrived. The freezing temperatures and fierce winds created snowdrifts some 20 feet deep. Ordinary, maybe, for some parts of the world, but for England, freakish.
“Ach, I knew it was worth keeping my skis!” chortled my mother, and ordered my father to fetch them down from the attic.
Being Austrian, she was very much at home on skis, and I think she was secretly pleased not to drive Ivy for a while. She happily skied into Wareham to pick up bread and other necessities.
If late December was cold, January was even colder. The sea froze for a mile out from the shore at Herne Bay in Kent, and the upper reaches of the Thames began to freeze over, thick enough for people to skate on.
To me, Dorset became a fairytale setting of pristine, sparkling snow and silver icicles. Jack Frost painted his patterns on my bedroom window, and the world outside was blindingly white and silent.
Snowy Twinkletoes was moved into the garage for a while, but not before I’d set him down in the snow to see what he thought of it. Not much. He flicked the snow off his paws at every hop. I was surprised to see that he wasn’t as white as I thought he was; against the virgin snow he looked quite yellow.
At the end of the Christmas holidays, school started again. Because of the weather, the trains had been cancelled, and a special bus was laid on. The bus set off valiantly but scarcely travelled a mile before it turned back, unable to negotiate the snowdrifts blocking the road. We were forced to stay at home and my happiness was complete.
That bitter winter dragged on for three long months. We went out very little, but that didn’t bother me. I’ve always been happy in my own company, a dreamer. I was perfectly content in my room, weaving stories in my head, making things or reading. As my reading progressed, I developed an insatiable appetite for Enid Blyton, but I also remember a book called A Tale of Two Horses, and another, Rascal the True Story of a Pet Raccoon. I devoured whatever books I could lay my hands on, and never had enough.
But that was all about to change. New neighbours moved into the house two doors down from us. I was about to make lifelong friends.